Sonata

I believe every sunrise and I remember the smell of wet grass, the color of robins, and rustle of leaves on the big oaks that outlive nations, all this comes with each sunrise.

Sonata marks the sixth and final installment of Charles Bowdens towering Unnatural History of America series. While his earlier volumes were suffused with violence and war, Bowden offers here a celebration of rebirth and regrowth. Rendered in Bowden's inimitable style, more prose poetry than reportage, he evokes panoramas that contain the potential for respite and offer a state of grace all but lost in the endless wars of man.

Bowden travels back in time to the worlds of artists Francisco Goya and Vincent van Gogh, the latter painting furiously against encroaching madness. Van Gogh tries to dream a life of color, writes Bowden. Powder blue sheds, yellow stubble, pink skiesbut the fears and dark things drag him down. As Bowdens vivid prose wrestles with the madness of the world, van Goghs paintings represent an act of resistance, ultimately unsuccessful, against depression and suicide.

Moving from the vibrant hues of van Goghs painted gardens to Americas southern border, Bowden returns once more to the Mexican asylum run by El Pastor, Jose Antonio Galvan, who was first introduced to readers of the sextet in Jericho. Here, too, is the dream of a garden that will be planted in the desert, a promise of regeneration in a world gone mad. Poetic, elegiac, and elliptical, Sonata is the final, captivating book of Bowdens monumental career.